KURDISH FIGHTERS FROM THE PEOPLE'S PROTECTION UNITS (YPG) BACKING THE US - LED COALITION .THEY HAVE FOUGHT ISIS OF IRAQ AND SYRIA.KURDISH WOMEN FORCES TO BE RECKONED WITH FOR ISIS.

October 10, 2017 at 12:30 pm,

Peshmerga and Yazidi forces, with US Special operators and USAF tactical support, successfully cut off the occupied city of Sinjar in northern Iraq. This action blocked Highway 47, the strategic line of communications between the Islamic State self-declared Caliphate capital in Raqqa, Syria from Mosul.

YPG is an acronym whose translation means People’s Protection Units. It is the home grown defense forces of the Kurdish area of Syria. It emerged after the Civil War erupted in Syria and started to spill over into Syrian Kurdistan, now known as Rojava, or Western Kurdistan.The men and women who make up the fighting force come from local communities and are mostly Kurdish, but the YPG also fights alongside non-Kurdish soldiers from the area including Syrian, Assyrian and Armenian Christians. And there are a small number of Americans and Europeans who’ve volunteered individually to join YPG in the fight against ISIS.The Kurdish communities in Rojava have lived there for thousands of years. The modern-day YPG was formed after the Qamishli uprising in 2004 by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).The YPG were being pushed back and it looked like ISIS would achieve victory. Then the U.S. started providing air support striking key targets and dropping military supplies and Turkey allowed Peshmerga Units to transit Turkey to support the YPG, the siege was broken and YPG has taken control of Kobane. This has been the first major defeat for ISIS which many hope will be the turning point in the War against ISIS. And this has brought worldwide attention to the YPG.The YPG has aligned itself with other forces against ISIS. Its’ forces were joined by the Peshmerga in the battle for Kobane. The YPG joined Peshmerga in Iraq to free the Yazidi community in Sinjar and was instrumental in providing security through Syria to Turkey for the refugees as they were fleeing ISIS forces. YPG has joined forces with the Free Syrian Army to fight ISIS.

A notoriously fierce segment of the Kurdish security forces are striking terror into the hearts of ISIS terrorists – female fighters. The Jihadists have no problem slaughtering defenseless women but they don’t like facing armed female warriors in battle because they don’t believe they’ll go to heaven if they’re killed by one of them.

Although the fight against IS in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane
galvanised many right-wingers in the West, the YPG’s “democratic
confederalism”, which espouses a libertarian socialist ideology.

Groups of female Kurdish fighters, known as Women's Protection Units, have been fighting on the front lines against ISIS for years. While they have been glamorized by Western media, little is known about the women and their motivations for fighting.To an ISIS militant, one of the worst things that could transpire in combat is not just being killed, but being killed by a woman. If this happens, ISIS members believe that they will go directly to hell. If hell exists, rest assured that they have been sent there by a number of Kurdish women.In August 2014, ISIS moved to the Sinjar area of Iraq and began to persecute, capture and kill its minority Yazidi population–an ancient, mainly Kurdish people. Female Kurdish soldiers were instrumental in the Kurdish counteroffensive, rescuing thousands of Yazidis trapped by ISIS on Mount Sinjar. The women have since extended their fight against radical militants to Kobani, Syria .Many of these Kurdish women compose the female branch of the YPG militia, which, along with PKK (a Kurdish nationalist party) guerrillas and US-backed peshmergas (recognized Kurdish soldiers), have been fighting ISIS back and providing humanitarian aid to local populations for nearly the past year.Anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 women form the all-female branch of the YPG--the YPJ--and are usually 18 to 25 years old. Influenced by the Marxist-Leninist thought of jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish nationalist party demands that gender equality be re-instated, making women's "liberation" a key component of the party's nationalist project.

They’ve earned a reputation for bravery and skill in the battlefield so much so Peshmerga women are sometimes compared to Amazons.

A notoriously fierce segment of the Kurdish security forces are striking terror into the hearts of ISIS terrorists – female fighters. The Jihadists have no problem slaughtering defenseless women but they don’t like facing armed female warriors in battle because they don’t believe they’ll go to heaven if they’re killed by one of them.

YPG separate from PKK, leaders say.At the conclusion of the memorial ceremony last weekend, female fighters as well as the mothers and widows of YPG members killed fighting ISIS

The war against ISIS has been the catalyst to put aside the differences between the various parties to fight the more immediate battle against a brutal force. But as the conflict subsides, the differences will arise again: the Turks are suspicious of the alliance between the PKK and the YPG; the Peshmerga are concerned that the YPG and their sponsors, the PYD and PKK may have intents on unifying Kurdistan which would be a threat to the KRG in Iraq. It is very much a liquid situation that is evolving and no one really knows what the future holds.Upping pressure on the jihadists, the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia alliance on Saturday began its own offensive on IS’s other main bastion, Raqa in Syria. Raqa and Mosul are the last major cities The US-led coalition that launched operations against IS two years ago is providing crucial backing to both offensives, with air strikes and special forces advisers on the ground. SDF forces have been pushing south from areas near the Turkish border towards Raqa.in Syria and Iraq under IS control.Like in the battle for Mosul, the goal of the Raqa offensive is to surround and isolate the jihadists inside the city before mounting a street-to-street assault. In both cases, officials are warning of long and bloody battles ahead, with IS expected to put up fierce resistance and use trapped civilians as human shields.More than a million people are believed to be in Mosul. Raqa in 2011 had a pre-war population of some 240,000, and more than 80,000 people have since fled there from elsewhere in Syria.

Iraqi Kurdish forces have seized the town of Bashiqa near Mosul from the Islamic State group, an official said Tuesday, as US-backed militia forces advanced on the jihadists. The peshmerga said there were still some suicide bombers and snipers there, and that about five per cent of Bashiqa remained under jihadist control. Iraqi forces have been tightening the noose around Mosul since launching the offensive on October 17, with elite troops last week breaching city limits.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters prepare to fire a multiple rocket launcher as they hold a position in Sheikh Ali village near the town of Bashiqa.

Peshmerga fighters stand on the edge of a small outpost on the Western outskirts of Kirkuk, just a few kilometers from the frontlines with ISIL. The men here say if it weren't for the Peshmerga, ISIL would have taken control of Kirkuk as well as Mosul and Tikrit.The Iraqi army's mass desertions in Mosul and Tikrit allowed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) to establish a foothold in the two key northern Iraqi cities from which they've continued to advance on the capital, capturing a number of key border crossings in recent days.

Anger in Ankara over Iraqi Kurdish independence moves.Attempts by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq to expand its territory, while inching its way toward independence, may augur more difficulties for Turkey in a region where it already faces multiple problems.Amicable ties with the KRG one of the few friends Turkey has left in the region remain important for Ankara and ensure measured Turkish responses to such moves by Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.Given the antipathy Turkish nationalists have for all things Kurdish, however, the situation could spin out of control with unexpected developments on the ground, leaving Ankara with yet another hostile neighbor on its borders.The first signs of potential crisis between Ankara and Erbil came when the Kurdish-dominated provincial council in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk decided, as part of this year’s Nowruz celebrations, to raise the Kurdish flag alongside the Iraqi flag over the city’s historic citadel and other official institutions.

An independence referendum for Iraqi Kurdistan was held on 25 September 2017, with preliminary results showing approximately 93 percent of votes cast in favour of independence. Despite reporting that the independence referendum would be non-binding, the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) characterised it as binding,although they claimed that a positive result would trigger the start of state building and negotiations with Iraq rather than an immediate declaration of independence. The referendum's legality was rejected by the federal government of Iraq.